What WPP’s Obviously acquisition means for VMLY&R’s influencer marketing strategy

WPP acquired influencer marketing agency Obviously to boost its VMLY&R network's global influencer marketing capabilities, particularly in heavily regulated industries.

The deal, announced Monday, includes Obviously's team of nearly 100 people joining VMLY&R's network, according to WPP. Obviously will keep its independence as an agency brand and maintain its brand and agency relationships, said Mae Karwowski, its CEO.

Obviously was founded by Karwowski and Chief Technology Officer Maxime Domain in 2014, and has worked with clients including Google, Ford, Ulta Beauty and Amazon.  The agency is based in New York and has operations in San Francisco and Paris. A big part of Obviously’s appeal is its tech platform, which was built for “advanced-level” influencer marketers looking for services such as influencer identification, campaign management, contracting, content management analysis, and reporting optimization, according to Karwowski.

Global scale

VMLY&R Global CEO Jon Cook says the need for this type of acquisition came as he noticed the company had a gap in the agency network’s ability to provide an influencer marketing capability at a global scale.

“This is one of the hottest areas in marketing and an area that we had some experience, but we certainly didn't have depth and any sort of specialization,” Cook said. “We could do one-off influencer marketing, but we have so many clients who have portfolios of products and services. If you look across our client base, they're all operating at, if not a national scale, they're operating at a global scale.”

Obviously makes it a point to be able to work with any type of influencer regardless of the size of their following. The agency has more than 60 million creators in its databases and over 150,000 creators in its preferred network.

“We are really, really good at finding very niche creators,” Karwowski said. “[If] you're a client who wants to do something in southeast Florida around a new restaurant opening. We can do that for you and we can do that for you very quickly.”

When asked if she has seen brands pause their TikTok campaigns as a result, Karwowski said it has been “business as usual.”

“Brands have seen so much success with TikTok,” she said. “We don't think anything is going to happen in actuality but if it were to, we're going to be launching campaigns up until the last minute of the last day. And we also just think you can't put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to short-form content. People watch so much TikTok, they're going to go somewhere else to watch a ton of really compelling content.”

Heavily regulated industries

Cook said he’s seen growing interest in influencer marketing expertise from clients in heavily regulated industries such as finance, pharma and healthcare.

“One of the things that we were most attracted to about Obviously was their ability to work in regulated industries, because working in short-form content is hard enough for mainstream brands, let alone those who have advanced regulatory or legal considerations,” he said. “Obviously has really prioritized working through those considerations in the most careful way, but without losing speed.”

While Cook didn’t go into details, he agreed that influencer marketing expertise can be a benefit as part of the global creative and media Pfizer review Ad Age reported in February.

“WPP is all about speed to culture, and that's a big proposition we have in that process. And it's our job to, as WPP, to demonstrate that speed, to demonstrate that innovation and technologies and talents and Obviously will allow us to do that even more.”

More involved in pitches

Both Cook and Karwowski said they have seen an increased trend of creators becoming more involved in pitch processes for agencies.

“That speaks to the larger trend of influencers and influencer marketing not being its own silo and actually being a really key part of the creative strategy,” Karwowski said.

Cook noted that he’s seen the trend grow as agencies look to differentiate themselves which he said could be an “effective” way to “liven a pitch.”

“When you're used to seeing creatives, art directors and copywriters bring a brand to life, it's fun to see that and then to see how a creator would bring it to life in their voice, which is sometimes different than a way a copywriter or a creative director would bring it together,” Cook said. “And it's even more beautiful when you see that combination together.”